AJJ FALL MEETING 2017
CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS

SATURDAY December 9th
KEYNOTE LECTURE 1 (9:15-10:30 RY105)
Classification as an Approach to Becoming: A Structural Way of Thinking about Socialisation
Dr. Joy Hendry, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, Oxford Brookes University
Introduction by Prof. Bruce White, Dean of the Institute of the Liberal Arts, Doshisha University

Dr. Hendry will explain the structural approach to early education in Japan that she developed many years ago after a period of Japan Foundation-supported fieldwork as a young mother herself. She spent six months working with Japanese families and in day nurseries and kindergartens, one of which was attended by her elder son, and followed up that research with a longer period a few years later when both of her children attended a primary school in the same location. The approach builds on the idea that a system of classification is learned very early as a part of the process of socialisation and education which accompanies the early learning of language and other aspects of symbolic communication in a particular linguistic environment, and thus underpins and enables further educational activities in that context. She has spoken of the Japanese case many times over the years, and is looking forward to hearing the comments and reactions of a new generation of scholars interested in these and related subjects. She plans to illustrate the talk with photographs taken at the time of the initial research, but may well throw in a few more recent ones taken as she visits areas of Japan during the few weeks remaining before the AJJ meets.

INVITED SPEAKERS SESSION (11:00-12:30 RY410)
Social Markers of Acculturation and Immigrant Belonging in Japan
Prof. Adam Komisarof, Keio University, Faculty of Letters

Broadly there are two schools of thought about the social context of acculturation in Japan. The “optimistic” school argues that demographic imperatives will force Japan to admit foreign workers and become multicultural; moreover, non-Japanese are and will continue to be valued participants in communities and work organizations. The “pessimistic” school contends that the non-Japanese population is miniscule and will remain so, as the government promotes only temporary migration; furthermore, Japanese construct a sharp dichotomy between themselves and non-Japanese, which makes the prospect of immigrants “becoming” Japanese unlikely.

Social markers of acculturation (or “SMA”) are socially constructed indicators of naturalization, which are the perceptual signposts (e.g., language skills, demonstrated attitudes, and behaviors) that recipient nationals use in deciding whether a migrant is a part of the host community. These milestones collectively reflect the degree of host inclusiveness, as they clarify not only which and how many of the markers are considered important, but also how easily the markers themselves are considered acquirable in the first place. SMA provide an alternative platform to gain insight into which of the aforementioned schools of thought about acculturation contexts actually predominates in Japan. Based on a survey conducted at twelve universities among 443 students, the presenter will describe which SMA were considered most important in deciding whether to accept immigrants as fellow Japanese and which variables moderated this relationship, with the goal of clarifying how acculturation is conceived among young Japanese and the implications for immigrants’ prospects of acceptance in Japanese society.

Bushido and the lasting legacy of “samurai ethics” in contemporary Japan
Prof. Andrew Horvat, Josai International University, Faculty of International Humanities

In Japan, no newspaper has a humor column. It is rare to see a pun in any headline. None publish any letters from readers complaining about articles or editorials. If such an attitude toward journalism seems a bit austere it is not by accident. The foundations of Japan’s modern news media were laid in the 1870s by former samurai, retainers of feudal lords on the losing side of the 1868 civil war that paved the way for the transformation of Japan into a modern nation state. Adherence to samurai-influenced behavior in contemporary Japan is hardly anachronistic.

This paper argues that although Bushido in name has been discredited, evidence of Confucian-influenced samurai morality can still be found in many aspects of Japanese life. At the university where I teach, students are encouraged to follow the motto, “self-improvement through learning,” an educational philosophy of moral self-strengthening once propagated in books titled Bushido by both the liberal Nitobe Inazo and the conservative Inoue Tetsujiro. While the former has been debunked as “samurai lore for foreign consumption” (Chamberlain, Ota) and the latter’s glorification of selfless loyalty by the 47 Ronin has been exposed as anachronistic (Bito, Smith), the educational philosophy of character building through learning (Brown) has had a lasting impact, both prior to World War II and since. Though Bushido is no longer invoked to encourage young men to sacrifice themselves to a divine Emperor, samurai-style self-improvement is still called on to inspire students to learn English to become better “global human resources.”

INDIVIDUAL PAPERS SESSION 1 (11:00-12:30 RY446)

Becoming Intā-mama: Mothers’ Construction of an Elite Status Culture through Children’s International Schooling in Tokyo
Dr. Hiroki Igarashi, Chiba University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Although studies on elite schools have examined how children enrolled in these schools acquire a sense of entitlement and/or privilege, how the parents of these children come to construct an elite status culture through their everyday interactions around the school setting is less clear. This aspect should not be neglected because children are often used to establish their families’ position in the class/status hierarchy. As a case study, I observed the preschool section of an international school in Tokyo, a new type of elite schools in globalizing Japan. International schools have been actively sought out by local privileged families to help prepare their children to achieve upward social mobility in the globalizing stratification hierarchy. I examine the processes in which local Japanese elite families, particularly the mothers as status makers of the households, construct an elite status culture as Intā-mama (mothers who send their children to international schools) through their children’s, international schooling. I argue that these local Japanese mothers are lured into more mobile, free, cosmopolitan and extravagant lifestyles while fulfilling the institutional expectations and responsibilities associated with motherhood and international schools. These local privileged mothers are generating this new elite status culture to differentiate themselves from the established elite Japanese families, who enroll their children in elite private Japanese schools in Tokyo.

Entrepreneurial Family Planning – The discourse of Ninkatsu as subjectification strategy in Japan’s low birth rate society
Isabel Fassbender, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Graduate School of Global Studies

Try harder, be better, overcome your own and society’s shortcomings! This is the mantra of neoliberal economies and ideologies. Motivational speakers and extensive self-help corners in bookstores are symbols of our times and self-improvement seminars are on the weekly schedule. We are incited to design our fate, improve ourselves on a daily basis and be entrepreneurs of our own lives. This motto is now being translated to family planning in contemporary Japan’s low birthrate society. According to a popular discourse circulating around the catchy keyword Ninkatsu (“pregnancy activities”)– in magazines, newspapers, TV, but also in the countermeasures against the low birthrate – (female) individuals have to become entrepreneurial selves in order to achieve the goal of becoming parents, incited to get educated and plan their lives thoroughly – on a social, economic as well as on a physiological level. In this paper, I critically explore the narrative of self-optimization and life design in said discourse, using the concept of the “entrepreneurial self”, a neoliberal strategy of subjectification theorized in governmentality studies. This theoretical framework provides the tool for the analysis of the discourse in newspaper and magazine articles, as well as in data obtained in interviews with opinion leaders and participatory observation in Ninkatsu events in and around Tokyo in 2014/2015. The aim is to shed light on and investigate the imperative of self-management in the narrative surrounding family planning in contemporary Japan and to position it in the larger context of neoliberal subjectification strategies.

Gender and Low Fertility in Japan
Kayla Shea, University of Massachusetts Amherst

One of the most pressing issues facing industrialized societies is decreasing fertility rates. Japan presents an acute variation on this problem; the risk of falling fertility rates and the consequent decreasing demographic of working-aged citizens poses a threat to the health of the economy and the security of the elderly class. This growing phenomenon is the result of many challenges faced by young families, particularly by young women. The continuation of concepts such as “Ryōsai kenbo” or “Good Wife, Wise Mother” within the increasingly globalized population has widened the dichotomy between the traditional and contemporary ideologies. In turn, there is growing disconnect amongst educated Japanese women and these gender-influenced roles which are typically expected of them. This research examines the contrast between traditional values of Japanese gender and age-based Confucian hierarchies, and how they clash with 21st century counterculture. Based on data which shows a steady and consistent decline in the fertility rates in Japan, there is an increasing risk of a point of no return being reached in regard to replacement rates. I aim to show how this trend is largely perpetuated by a lack of concrete governmental policy implementation in regard to aspects of child rearing, which would alleviate the pressures of parenting. In turn, educated young women are increasingly investing in their own careers- aiming to enter the workforce and create a place for themselves within companies, conversely opting to forego motherhood in doing so. I conclude that this continued lack of avocation of young women as equal members of the workforce and of both parents as equal-share caregivers will confirm this drop in fertility rates.

INDIVIDUAL PAPERS SESSION 2 (11:00-12:30 RY447)
The Presence and Absence of Immigration in Internationalization of Higher Education: A Critical Review of International Student Migration in Japan
Daesung Kwon, Doshisha University, Graduate School of Global Studies

Since the “big bang reforms” on Japanese higher education in 2004, Japanese universities have been buckling down to the task of internationalizing universities in earnest, and it seems like the buzzword, “internationalization”, is increasingly considered something that affects the very existence of the entire higher education in Japan. Amid the change and development, there have been many attempts to answer the two major questions on internalization of higher education (IHE) in Japan – what is the meaning and impact of internationalization for and on Japanese higher education? The answers provided by both “inside” and “outside” perspectives are both polemical and rounded. It is clear that various accounts of IHE in Japan so far are very informative, insightful, productive and sometimes reflexive. However, there is still always one thing missing in the reviewing and evaluating process despite its great importance in discussing about IHE in Japan, and that is “immigration”, in other words, “the permanent settlement of international students” who are a key component of IHE.

Against this backdrop, this paper critically reviews international student migration in the context of IHE in Japan, and attempts to spell out reasons why the permanent settlement of international students has been ignored by the Japanese government and universities, and argues why the issue of immigration now matters, and concludes with a new direction for future research on international student migration in Japan.

A Comparative Study on the Internationalization of Education between China and Japan
Dr. Wuyun Wang, Gifu City Women’s College

China has long been the world’s most important sending market for international students. Indeed, burgeoning Chinese enrolments have driven much of the growth in international student numbers for major study destinations over the past decade. However, that growth began to slow in 2015, and, while a record-number of Chinese students still went abroad in 2016, the overall growth trend in Chinese outbound mobility has begun to flatten out quite noticeably.

There are profound implications in this for international educators, but it is accompanied as well by a sharply contrasting trend in terms of the number of foreign students that are now enrolled in China. On 1 March 2017, the Chinese Ministry of Education revealed that China hosted 442,773 international students in 2016, representing an 11.4% increase over the year before. China attracts more international students than any other Asian power and ranks third globally, behind the United States and the United Kingdom. Like China, the international students are also increasing in Japan. The number of international students as May 1, 2016 is 239,287 persons , increase by 30,908 persons (14.8％) compared with the result of last year. Why is internationalization of education so important to China and Japan? What role are the governments playing? How do the international students feel about that role? Based on the data from a survey in Japan and China, this study will focus on the meaning of internationalization of education from a comparative examination of social and political situation in the two countries.

Chinese Ethnic Schooling in Japan: Identity Formation among Students
Dr. Yat Yu Wong, Beijing Normal University, Zhuhai, School of Chinese

In this paper, I examine the enculturation process and identity formation among students of Chinese ethnic schools in Japan, focusing on the ethnic educational practices and experiences of overseas Chinese. Differing from many previous discussions arguing that ethnic schooling plays an essential
role in making patriotic citizens and cultural descendants of a particular ethnic group, I elucidate the main role of a Chinese ethnic school in Yokohama, Japan, in the formation of diversified identities among the students. Many studies on overseas Chinese in Japan focus on the construction of Chinese diaspora by successful businessmen and transnational professionals and their history, as well as the identity of ethnic Chinese. However, Chinese ethnic school education, which plays an important role in maintaining the network of diaspora and construction of the next generation’s identities, has rarely been studied. A few studies explore the history and educational policy of Chinese ethnic schools in Japan. Nevertheless, extensive research on the area of Chinese ethnic schools and the identities of their students are very limited.

This paper aims to fill this gap. I explore how the students construct or deconstruct their identities through ethnic schooling, as well as how the narratives of the people in ethnic schools reflect the changing Chinese diaspora in Japan. I collected data through participant observation, semi-structured, in-depth interviews, and written sources. I worked as a part-time teacher at Yangzhen School (a pseudonym) in Yokohama Chinatown in Japan for one year and seven months from September 2012 until March 2014.

ORGANIZED PANEL 1 Going Global: Reeducating the Business Mind (14:00-15:30 RY410)
Through the Virtual Wall: Virtual Anthropology and the Design of AI
Mary Reisel, Rikkyo University

The growth of the cyber world has led to the development of virtual anthropology and e-ethnography along many new fields of research originating in social sciences and brain research, such as neuro-science, cyber psychology, and neuro-anthropology. While traditional businesses keep offering anthropologists work as trainers and language instructors, Internet and Hi-Tech companies are starting to open up to ideas and work style of the new world. Along Hofstede’s good old scale, I found myself researching AI psychology and presenting in Hi-Tech conferences in Tokyo, an experience that only a few years ago sounded like fantasy.

Based on my studies and research conducted in virtual ethnography and online cultures, the presentation will open a door to the virtual world as well as to the real business world that accompanies it and adapts to new norms of work quite fast. It will bring case studies of research conducted online, and the difference between working in the virtual anthropology in Japan and in other countries.

Language, Ideology, and Cross-cultural management: Cases of Japanese managers in Hong Kong and the United States
Dr. Yi Zhu, University of Tsukuba, Graduate School of Business Sciences

With the increasing presence of Japanese companies overseas, nowadays many of them invest a great deal in English education, aiming to improve their English language abilities. However, is English the main and only major challenge that Japanese companies face when managing their local employees? Do people with better English abilities have a real stronger advantage when attempting to achieve their goals than those who do not poses language skills? This presentation aims to answer these questions based on fieldwork conducted in two Japanese companies, an apparel retailer in Hong Kong and a ramen chain in the United States. Despite their differences, the top managements in both companies believe in the potential of Japanese culture and aim to spread Japan-centered ideology across cultures through their products and management that is considered to be superior to that of other companies. Stories from these two companies show that one of the major factors that determine their relationship with local employees is not the language ability, but rather, the extent to which they attempt to impose Japan-centered ideology on the locals or, in another words, the extent to which they expect the local employees to “Japanize” their behaviors. This implies that language is a tool to express deeply rooted ideas, such as how employees interpret Japan-centered ideology and take action based on it. The findings of this study suggest that companies should invest more in educating employees to improve their ways of thinking and highlights the necessity of respecting and learning from local people rather than simply focusing on language education.

Japanese Management at Work Overseas? Kikkoman’s Advancement to the United States
Dr. Atsushi Sumi, Meiji University, School of Business Administration

Kikkoman corporation, a well-known soy source manufacturing company in Japan, has grown to the global company today, in its organizational forms and its market share. The company, however, characterizes its “Japanese style management” practices today through its ongoing emphasis on the labor-management cooperation and the stable employment for its employees, not only in factories in Japan, but also in other profit centers overseas. Drawing on the data from my recent research on Kikkoman, the presentation examines the transferability of Kikkoman’s “Japanese management practices” to the United States by looking at the process of factory start-up of the company’s first soy source manufacturing plant in Wisconsin, the United States. How has Kikkoman’s Japanese management emphasis in its management practices changed during the localization process to the United States? The research found that Kikkoman has successfully maintained “the stable employment” (if not the long-term employment in the Japanese sense) with the local American labor force to this day in Wisconsin. The goal of the presentation is to show Kikkoman’s advancement to the United States as a case where some elements of the Japanese management practices, such as emphases on the labor-management cooperation and the stable employment, could be strategically preserved overseas in an attempt to create competitive advantages of the company, instead of disappearing during the course of the localization.

INDIVIDUAL PAPERS SESSION 3 (14:00-15:30 RY446)
Fushimi Tokiwa: Teaching Selfhood in Premodern Japan
Ben Grafström, Akita University, Center for Promotion of Educational Research and Affairs

The tale Fushimi Tokiwa is a Muromachi-period kōwakamai libretto recounting the suffering and sorrow of Tokiwa-gozen—mother of Minamoto no Yoshitsune and widow of Minamoto no Yoshitomo. While it is clear that kōwakamai composers borrowed material from earlier war tales and historical chronicles in order to create their own stand-alone art form, the purpose of creating and performing kōwakamai pieces appears to be rather different than the genres on which they are based. In keeping with the conference theme, this paper will argue that Fushimi Tokiwa should rightly be considered an educational text. The idea that this is piece is an educational text stands in contrast with its source material (that is, Heiji monogatari and Gikeiki) which were performance pieces meant to do a combination of eulogize heroes, placate the spirits of angry souls, and chronicle heroes’ lives. Unlike the war-tale and historical chronicle from which it draws inspiration, Fushimi Tokiwa addresses issues such as selfhood—both in terms of what it means to be a woman and what it means to be a child in premodern Japan. Not only does Fushimi Tokiwa address womanhood and childhood in the general social sense, but also within the contexts of both the burgeoning warrior society, as well as within a broader Buddhist worldview. In this way, I propose that performances of Fushimi Tokiwa served educational/didactic purposes in Muromachi Japanese society more similar to sekkyō-bushi rather than to the war tales and historical chronicles on which the tale is based.

Inventing Nature: Shiga Shigetaka’s Nihon Fūkeiron
Prof. Andreas Riessland, Nanzan University

Shiga Shigetaka, geographer, journalist, politician, and popular science author, was one of the most widely read writers in late 19th century in Japan. Today, though, both Shiga and his books are almost completely forgotten, in spite of the remarkable influence they’d had on the ideology of the relationship between the nation, its people and its natural environment.

In many ways, Shiga was a typical representative of the controversial and often confounding intellectual discourse that had developed out of the riotous early Meiji period. He was well versed in Japan’s pre-modern cultural canon but also an avid proponent of a modernist worldview based on principles of scientific thought and reason. An accomplished English reader and speaker, he was familiar with contemporary European and American thought, and he represented that particular kind of Meiji period intellectual who saw himself as the proponent of an enlightened and self-confident national identity. He avidly involved himself in the political goings-on of his time although ultimately, his involvement showed very little impact on the nation’s politics. But his publications, in particular his 1894 bestseller Nihon Fūkeiron, outlining the particular relationship between the landscape and its people, influenced the worldview of his readership in ways that reverberate until today. This presentation looks at the ideology behind Shiga’s theories about the uniqueness of Japan’s nature, to highlight what made him instrumental in creating the ideology about the special relationship between Japan’s nature and its people which marks the discourse until the present day.

Homeless Men and Notions of Selfhood
Dr. Matthew Wickens, Toyo University, Faculty of Sociology, Department of Social Psychology

Japanese society has numerous socially defined roles for men including most prominently the salaryman, but also others including ikumen (fathers activity engaged in child raising), soshokukei (young men not interested in dating and marriage), and others. Another definition of selfhood comes from men who become homeless or have experienced homelessness and are transitioning out of homelessness. Once homeless, certain strains arise as men seek to preserve their previous self-image with their new reality. While many men had defined their perceived themselves as a construction worker, craftsman, or other profession, without their work, they had to learn and adapt a new identity, rules, and norms as a homeless man.

How did the homeless community socialize homeless men? In what ways do informal interactions with other homeless men, social workers, caseworkers, non-profit agencies, and the public educate homeless men to act in a particular way? Although there were not many homeless men in the areas where I conducted fieldwork, several hundred gathered for soup lines. While some men chose to avoid the community, other interacted and learned the ways of their new community. Based on ethnographic research conducted in Tokyo, this paper explores how newly homeless men become socialized as individuals. It also examines their perceptions of what it means to be a man in Japanese society and how they reconcile their current status with how society socialized them.

INDIVIDUAL PAPERS SESSION 4 (14:00-15:30 RY447)

The significance of recent cultural practices by the Ainu Association of Hokkaido
Sakurako Koresawa, Tohoku University, Graduate School of Environmental Studies

It has been reported that the recent cultural practices among the Ainu people have a close connection with traditional use of nature resources; however, researchers, especially historians, criticize these practices with saying that they are a kind of reproduction of barbarism or take them as quite another matter. Therefore, these practices cannot be explained satisfactorily by the hitherto proposed research. Such cultural practices initiated by associations and regional communities are very important in the
point of socialization because the people promote self-awareness as Ainu through these experiences. In order to think that, this presentation seeks to show relation between their recent cultural practices and the concept of ‘indigenous peoples’, with cases and histories of the Ainu Association of Hokkaido (AAH).

In this study, following things are revealed. (1) AAH use ‘indigenous peoples’ to connect the traditional Ainu people with the recent Ainu people and their cultural practices. (2) In that context, the traditional Ainu people means hunting-gathering people, and such image is completely different from the other ‘traditional’ images the people of 1940’s had. (3) In other aspects, 1980’s-1990’s was the significant term for AAH because of the rise of the movement for rights of indigenous peoples, and the contents of ‘indigenous peoples’ has been formed profoundly affected by politics of Japanese government. To sum up, the contents of the recent cultural practices have been strongly influenced by the international definition of indigenous peoples and politics of Japanese government. We can discuss the feature and the significance of it with other cases and ‘historicizing’ them.

Roles of Embodied Knowledge and Natural Knowledge in Forest Management Volunteer Group [Presentation in Japanese/日本語]
Kaori Ishii, Tohoku University, Graduate School of Environmental Studies

In this presentation, we will discuss roles of embodied knowledge and natural knowledge in the field of forest management and how are the members sustaining activities, with citizens’ forest management activities as a subject. Currently in Japan, the shortage of forest management is a problem. Behind the trend, there are social and economic factors such as substitution of energy from firewood to fossil fuel, inflow of inexpensive foreign wood and sluggish domestic forestry, depopulation and aging of rural population. Under such circumstances, participation in forest management by citizens is crucial. What is important for members to sustain their voluntary activity?

In this study, I participated in a citizens’ forest management organization doing thinning, undercutting, and vegetation survey in Sendai city. There are about 100 members, and they are divided into two groups, people doing aggressive management such as thinning, and people avoid making human intervention and aim for nature observation. Sometimes there are conflict between the two groups. However, members are sustaining activities while flexibly talking about desirable way of management. I mainly participated in activities of thinning and bush cleaning. Contrary to the conventional argument that the importance of natural knowledge and embodied knowledge will degrade if the work is standardized by advances in technology, they have an important role for people to stay motivated and sustain their work.

How to become a Śāntamūrti (embodier of quietude): Ethnographic observations from within the Temple of Peace (Shanti Mandir) social network
Dr. Patrick McCartney, Kyoto University, Australian National University

This paper provides an overview of the socialisation process within the social network of the ‘Temple of Peace’ organisation. Shanti Mandir is a new religious movement founded in 1987 by the current spiritual head, Swami Nityānanda Saraswati. The social network consists of thousands of people spread across a global network of devotees. During multiple visits between 2009 and 2013, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in the organisation’s main ashram (cloistered community), which is located on the west coast of India, Gujarat. I met thousands of people from all across the globe who came to be educated on how to perform and embody a particular disposition, and establish an internal definition of self based on the ‘authentic’ and ‘legitimate’ yogic identity promoted by Shanti Mandir (cf. Jenkins 1994). In this paper I ask the following question: What makes the groups different? I answer this question through employing Legitimation Code Theory’s first analytical dimension, namely, Specialisation. This is done to identify the various ways in which the symbolic exchanges of capital between the groups occur, how the internal nature of the competition for status and recognition determines legitimate participation, and how the distinct hierarchies operate based on observations of the spatial and gendered relations between the groups. This demonstrates that the hieratic structure of the network is not linear; but, instead, it can be understood as a three-sided pyramid. Each group works interdependently to support the guru’s mission, yet engages in intra-group competitions for status and symbolic resources towards becoming ‘authentic’ members.

INDIVIDUAL PAPERS SESSION 5 (14:00-15:30 RY448)
Tachinomiya: Photo Exhibition as Research Method
Dr. Steven C. Fedorowicz, Kansai Gaidai University, Asian Studies Program

Recently I held a photo exhibition called Tachinomiya: There are Two Sides to Every Noren. It was as a visual ethnography of a local drinking establishment in Japan with prints illustrating the atmosphere of the shop along with portraits of the owner, employees and regular customers. One outstanding feature of this tachinomiya is its long, dark blue noren, a kind of fabric curtain as its entrance that signals that the shop is open for business and provides partial seclusion for the shop and customers. The noren can be seen as a fluid wall; when calm it blocks much of the view from the outside, but when the wind blows its separated partitions offer more glimpses of the inside. The glimpses can be narrow or revealing. One cannot control the wind; this fluid wall illustrates the complexities of personal privacy in public spaces in Japan, especially in the context of taking photographs in public and image rights. Initially I thought the photo exhibition to be the final product of the fieldwork and research. But I found the exhibition and interactions with the gallery audience to reveal important aspects of heuristic processes, meaning-creation, evocation and multivocality. Viewers were doing more than merely looking at my photographs, they were analyzing, scrutinizing, reacting and providing various interpretations and valuable feedback. In this presentation I will discuss the “post-fieldwork encounters” of the photo exhibition as a research method and a collaborative media event along the lines of the relatively new multimodal perspective in visual anthropology.

Japanese Art World in the Inland Sea: Social and Artistic Issues behind Setouchi Triennale
Simon Tu, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Department of Japanese Studies

First coined by Arthur Danto and subsequently developed by Howard Becker, the notion of art world usually refers to cooperative networks comprising of suppliers, art professionals (such as artists, performers, dealers, and critics), bureaucrats, and consumers. Meanwhile, the emergence of Japanese contemporary art festivals for regional revitalization since the last decade calls for connection to, and collaboration with, inhabitants of rural regions conventionally outside of the urban-based art world. Based on my on-going research centered on Setouchi Triennale – an example of such festivals of the largest scale, this paper examines the extended network of art world incorporating agents who have not been taken into account formerly, such as rural inhabitants, volunteers, and tourists. This paper discusses social issues entailed thereof: What are the social changes brought by the art festival? How do local inhabitants negotiate in the process? What do they think and how do individuals think differently? This paper also considers artistic issues implicated: What does the extended art world mean to artistic process? In this process, how are artistic values recognized, differentiated, and negotiated? This paper further demonstrates how Setouchi Triennale exemplifies a paradox between artistic value and social value inherent in the extended art world.

INDIVIDUAL PAPERS SESSION 6 (16:00-17:00 RY410)
The governmentality of teaching and learning: acquiescence or resistance?
Dr. Bregham Dalgliesh, University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

This article critiques the ethics of teaching and learning (T&L) practices in the university. It argues they consummate contemporary regimes of government through the backdoor of the classroom. To this end, the university is first depicted as an open systems organization traversed by the imperatives of advanced liberalism. The article then examines Henry Giroux’s critical pedagogy, which links the cultivation of critical citizens to a democratic polity. However, Giroux’s proposal for student emancipation through juxtaposing knowledge with power is rejected in favour of a Foucauldian framework of governmentality and ethics. A governmentality framework understands the teaching and learning regimes (TLRs) of active learning as a solution to the imperatives of the conduct of conduct incited by advanced liberal government, which traditional T&L practices of passive learning are unable to satisfy. The innocuousness of these changes in student conduct is subsequently interpreted in terms of its ethical import. Following Foucault’s demarcation of ethics from morality, four elements of ethics are discerned and mapped onto TLRs: the ethical substance, or what to act on (mind); the ethical work, or how to act upon (individualisation); the mode of subjectification, or who must act (autonomous learners); and the ethical conduct, or why we must act (self-entrepreneurial subjects). Finally, the article suggests the academic’s purgatory between their former identity as a teacher and their current role as an instructor can be resolved in the classroom itself through an agonistic ethical relation to the student, which is simultaneously a form of resistance of TLRs.

How Nationalism Can Undermine English Language Education Policy in Japan in Subtle and Not-so-subtle Ways
Dr. Robert W. Aspinall, Doshisha University, Center for Global Education

Those who design English language programmes in Japan’s education system are faced with many practical difficulties. These problems are well known and include the university and high school entrance exam system, lack of time in the curriculum, poor student motivation, and lack of opportunities to practice English in authentic situations. But another set of obstacles is also present in the form of nationalist discourses that paint the English language as a threat to Japanese identity and culture. Writers like social commentator Fujiwara Masahiko, linguist Suzuki Takao, and communication expert Tsuda Yukio have warned about how an obsession with English is a manifestation of Japan’s inferiority complex towards the West (and in particular to the USA). This paper makes use of theories of ‘banal nationalism’, ‘secondary nationalism’ and also Nakasone’s self-styled ‘healthy nationalism’ in order to examine in more detail the nature of the ideological opposition to the pursuit of excellence in English in Japan, and the way that this opposition is sometimes overt and other times unintentional and implicit. In relation to this, Ivan Hall’s notion of ‘cartels of the mind’ will also be examined in order to assess the merits of the provocative assertion that language can be used as a barrier to outside competition in Japan’s education and research industries. It has been argued that nationalist rhetoric can be used to justify this protectionism.

INDIVIDUAL PAPERS SESSION 7 (16:00-17:00 RY446)
Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Living with Autism: A Parent’s Perspective
Dr. Benjamin Dorman, Nanzan University, Anthropological Institute

This paper is based on an autoethnography I am working on concerning my role as a parent and advocate for my son, Lenny, who is on the autism spectrum. Our journey as a family has given us
first-hand experience in educational and socialization practices in Japan and the US surrounding a condition that is said to have reached epidemic proportions throughout the world. I consider different strategies employed by various social actors in Japan and the US—including educational and medical authorities, parents, volunteer groups, and NPOs—to deal with socialization of individuals on the spectrum. Theories surrounding the rise of diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder are as controversial as some of the numerous methods available to treat children on the autism spectrum. The responses in different cultures to the increase in cases vary radically between Japan and the US. Cultural and social practices, including those in the medical, biomedical, and educational fields, also vary between these countries, and these practices in turn influence community standards. A crucial element surrounding this issue is the widespread use of social media in creating and sustaining support networks that lead parents and others to seek methods of treatment and ways of understanding that are not presented by local authorities or represented through prevailing community attitudes.

“Self-searching” among Deaf and Hard- of-hearing Japanese Youth
Dr. Jennifer M. McGuire, Doshisha University, Department of Sociology

This paper examines deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) youth in Japan and processes of “self-searching” (jibun sagashi). It focuses on self-identified “inte” (short for “integration”): young DHH people who were educated in mainstream schools. Educational experiences have been shown to play a significant role in socialization, identity, and personhood. For DHH teens and young adults, their educational path, namely whether they attended a school for the deaf or a mainstream school, has a significant effect on their sense of self. As the percentage of DHH students being educated in mainstream spaces continues to increase, inte’s educational experiences are quickly becoming the norm for young DHH Japanese people.

Unlike students who are educated in schools for the deaf, inte typically have limited experience interacting with DHH peers until after completing secondary education. In mainstream educational spaces, they frequently struggled to communicate with classmates and teachers and employed “covering” or “passing” strategies. This is described as a life stage in which “jibun rashisha” (being oneself) cannot be actualized. Upon encountering “deaf school-raised” peers, inte begin to re-evaluate their positionality and sense of self. Through self-searching they reconcile biases regarding their own deafness as well as against signing DHH people with a desire to create horizontal (peer) identities through friendships. This paper explores how contemporary Japanese deaf and hard-of-hearing inte youth reflect upon their educational experiences as they search for and try to uncover what they refer to as “true” and “new” selves.

INDIVIDUAL PAPERS SESSION 8 (16:00-17:00 RY447)
A Private Japanese High School in the Early 21st Century
Dr. Rick Derrah, Kindai University, Faculty of Applied Sociology

This three-year study is an ethnography of a private high school in Japan. The purpose is to investigate how teachers at this school understand their environment in the context of changes in Japanese education and even larger changes in society. These changes include a decreasing population, shifting university admission policies, and changes to teacher licensing regulations. Methods of data collection include observations, interviews, artifact collection, and focus groups. These data are viewed through the lens of Communities of Practice and also through the Ethnography of Communication framework. The findings suggest that changes in student population numbers, university entrance requirements, and licensing procedures have all placed new demands upon teachers. Japan’s decreasing population places greater requirements upon teachers in private high schools to help with student recruitment. In addition, shifting admission policies have placed an emphasis on the connection between high schools and their associated universities. Schools actively work to protect this relationship. Finally, changes to teacher licensing regulations have introduced teacher training to private high schools as well as new members to the central community of practice in the school, the gakunen, or the group of teachers and students assigned to a year grade. Further data collection and analysis reveal how other societal trends shape the local practices of teachers, and how the teachers in the gakunen community of practice work at times together, and at times to resolve conflicts with each other, students, and parents as they confront demands being placed on educators in Japan in the 21st century.

Examining Career Guidance in Japanese Municipal Senior High Schools– Transition Mechanisms and Postsecondary Educational Trajectories
Vincent B. Lesch, German Institute for Japanese Studies, Tokyo

Irregular employment and average job turnover rates have been increasing for many years in Japan. At the same time, we observe a shift from a credential society (gakureki shakai) to a learning capital society. The concept of a smooth transition from educational system to labor market, which was once a defining characteristic of Japans credential society has become an anachronism (Tachibanaki 2006).

Employment in low-wage sectors, reduced career mobility, and fragmented work biographies are often considered as the result of insufficient education (Honda 2004) or different perceptions of the use of schooling and its instrumental (and intrinsic) value for post-school life (Sugimoto 2003). However, this neglects that critical factors for occupational success, such as educational opportunities schools offer and individual learning competencies are not evenly distributed.

This research project re-evaluates the role of senior high school and workforce-related education in the transition process into the labor market against the background of worsening job prospects. It explores the micro level praxis of schooling and career guidance at municipal senior high schools in the Tokyo metropolitan area by means of participatory observation during NPO–lead career guidance events and expert interviews with headmasters, teachers and NPO coordinators. By examining differences in the educational measures to promote labor market relevant skills and career guidance services, the project seeks to illuminate how schools shape graduates’ career trajectories and their chances of a successful transition into the labor market.

SUNDAY December 10th
KEYNOTE LECTURE 2 (10:00-11:00 RY105)
‘Keiko 稽古’ and ‘Shūyō 修養’: Self-cultivation in Japanese Philosophy [Presentation in Japanese/日本語]
Professor Tadashi Ichihara, Kyoto University, Graduate School of Education
Introduction by Prof. Noriya Sumihara, President of AJJ, Faculty of International Studies, Tenri University

The English word ‘self-cultivation’ usually encompasses many different processes that are somewhat more distinct in Japanese: keikō (稽古), shūyō (修養), shugyō (修行), jiko-keisei (自己形成), jiko-keihatsu (自己啓発) among others. In this talk I seek to discuss these varieties of ‘self-cultivations’ from the perspective of Japanese Philosophy. The specific focus will be on ‘shūyō’ in the Edo-period (1603-1867). As a synchronic structure, we can differentiate self-cultivation into the following 4 dimensions:

1) The way of cultural succession (稽古) – this implies mastering special arts or skills (わざ), and to submit one’s body to a special form or model (型). Here there is another tradition as well: to read books, typically the ‘study of natural laws through reading classics’ (朱子学の格物窮理).

2) The way of self-contemplation (内省) – this implies to reflect on oneself and to conquer oneself. Zen Buddhist thought forms the background of this path. Overlapping 1) with 2), there is a way of ‘inner purification through aesthetic practice’, as in the ‘Ka-ron (歌論), Poetic-theory’ and ‘Gei-ron (芸論), Art-theory’.

3) The way of human relations in a society (人倫) – this implies completion of one’s own personality through given works. This might include: (i) to succeed one’s own family business, (仁斎学や心学), (ii) to become one who governs, (朱子学の修己治人), and/or (iii) to surrender oneself to monarch or ruler (明治期の忠君愛国).

4) The way to follow nature, returning back to a pure innocence (自然法爾、無心、無垢).
Through this conceptual differentiation, I would like to discuss the diversity of self-cultivations in Japanese thought, as well as highlight the common ideal goal of different ways of self-cultivations. I hope the talk will provide new ways of thinking about modern education and new pathways for education-related research.

ORGANIZED PANEL 2 Re-Japan: Building, Interpreting, Visioning the Japan’s Past (11:15-12:45 RY401)
The Glorious Past Constructed in the Kanazawa City-Planning, and the Past Activated in Tea Ceremony Today
Kozue Ito, Kanazawa University, Graduate School, Human and Socio-Environmental Studies

Kanazawa City has long been promoted as traditional castle town, where cultural legacy from the feudal era, including Tea Ceremony, is still alive. These days, several tea masters host large public tea ceremonies under the very local context of Kaga Hyakumangoku (=prosperous feudal past). This paper focuses on the construction of such context effective mostly in the city through analyzing the changes of how the feudal past of the city is interpreted and propagated by various actors.

Kanazawa City is now under a spell of “Kaga Hyakumangoku,” which originally refers to the rice productivity of the area and the financial power of the domain. Today, the phrase has become a
symbol of not only the financial, but also cultural prosperity of the city in the recent past, implying that all “tradition” in the present city has its origin in this particular era. However, such extreme admiration of the feudal past without any doubt is actually a recent phenomenon. This paper looks at positive and negative opinions on the feudal past by the municipal government, local historians, and a local newspaper. Nevertheless there used to be multiple opinions on the feudal past, with the dramatization of Maeda clan for Taiga Drama (Taiga Dorama) in 2002 as an opportunity, their opinions were unified under one purpose: Machi-zukuri (city-planning) based on the legacy of Kaga Hyakumangoku. In such a course of development of the city, the local world of Tea Ceremony was also affected by the extreme admiration of the feudal past.

The Miseducation of Japanese Prehistoric Homes and Lifestyles
Dr. John Ertl, Kanazawa University, Institute of Liberal Arts and Science

Since 1949, approximately 900 buildings at 350 archaeological sites have been rebuilt in Japan to educate visitors about the homes and lifestyles of people in the ancient past. Reconstructed buildings (fukugen tatemono) are among the most prominent images of Japanese prehistory – along with pottery, clay figurines (dogu), and burial mounds (kofun). Unlike these other artifacts, however, these buildings are not originals. They are built based upon various data from the site and research on prehistoric architecture, which provides only a partial view of how these buildings appeared in the past. This partiality of data means that there are many subjective elements that go into their creation. These subjective elements may be economic or political motivations (e.g. to garner prestige or increase tourists) or they may be the idiosyncrasies of the individual architects that designed them. When presented at sites, however, the complex debates and unknown aspects about these buildings and ancient lifestyles are hidden from view. This presentation examines these reconstructed buildings as a form of miseducation, that encourages accepting experts’ interpretations without proper presentation of the data upon which they are informed.

Politics of Japanese School Textbooks and Prehistoric Archaeology
Dr. Yasuyuki Yoshida, Kanazawa University, Center for Cultural Resource Studies

This paper focuses on the relationship between the politics of Japanese school textbooks and the historical science of prehistoric archaeology. Japanese school textbooks for primary, junior-high, and high school are required to pass the screening (kyōkasho kentei) of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, Science and Technology. The main issues of the screening happened particularly in social studies (shakai) and history (rekishi) textbooks. The textbook issues (kyōkasho mondai) can be broadly related to the discussions of “freedom of expression” against governmental censorship. However, one of the actual issues is the conflict between liberalism and historical revisionism over the description of early modern and modern era, especially relating to the Pacific War, such as the Nanjing massacre and comfort women. Also, history textbooks passed the screening (authorized by the minister of the MEXT) are always watched by neighboring countries, especially China and Korea, which were “invaded” from Imperial Japan during the War. Thus, the main issues of the school history textbooks are “correctness” and “accuracy” of early modern and modern history, which is too hard to obtain consensus between various actors. Contrastingly, this presentation looks at textbook issues relating to prehistoric (but situated a part of “Japanese” history) archaeology raised by the Japanese Archaeological Association (JAA) from the early 2000s. Though JAA recognized the omission of the description of prehistoric periods in social studies and history textbooks as the problems due to simplifying curriculums, this paper examines overlooked problems from the perspective of utilization of archaeological research results.

ORGANIZED PANEL 3: INVITED SPEAKERS Thinking about Teaching on Japan, in Japan (11:15-12:45 RY402)

A Community of Practice of Japanese History Students in the International Zemi Classroom in Japan
Dr. David Uva, Doshisha University, The Institute for the Liberal Arts

Studying Japanese history in English-taught undergraduate programs (ETPs) at Japanese universities presents diverse challenges for international students, varying from grasping the meaning of historical events to struggling with Japanese terminology. To aid the learning process, there is a need for adequate explanations, definitions, overview, structures, and visualizations that are often lacking in commonly-used textbooks. The dynamic learning environment of the zemi (seminar) classroom offers an opportunity to deal with these difficulties. At the Institute for the Liberal Arts at Doshisha University, students with a shared interest in history gather in my intermediate seminar to form a community of practice to enhance their own and other students’ understanding of Japanese history. Over a semester, they participate in a collective research project that employs the interdisciplinary approach of liberal arts education and focuses on a specific time period of Japanese history. The common goal of this project is to create educational materials that will facilitate the study of Japanese history at the introductory level. With this goal in mind, students jointly interpret reading materials, discuss historical developments, share information, learn from each other’s skills and help each other in coordinating study activities. At the same time, they experience aspects of the academic research process such as source analysis and criticism, gathering materials, keeping an archive, notetaking, writing, editing, and producing practical knowledge. Furthermore, this project emphasizes the students’ active involvement inside and outside the classroom and a collective responsibility for its outcome.

Teaching Nihonjinron in a Multi-ethnic Liberal Arts Classroom Environment in Japan
Dr. Christian Etzrodt, Yamanashi University, International College of Liberal Arts

A central aim of liberal arts education is to develop the students’ ability to change perspectives. This is usually achieved by creating an interdisciplinary curriculum. However, perspectives do not only vary by subject areas but also by culture. This is the reason why the International College of Liberal Arts (iCLA) – founded in 2014 in Yamanashi – has built Japan area studies courses into the different subject areas, in order to allow the students to compare the Western tradition of liberal arts education with the Japanese tradition.

The Sociological Analysis of nihonjinron class fulfills this purpose in the Sociology concentration at iCLA. In this course theories about Japan developed in the nihonjinron are compared with Western sociological theories (which usually claim to be universally true). The most important theories of the nihonjinron are discussed in chronological order. The selection of the Western sociological theories is based on the similarity of the discussed topic. The audience is mixed. Usually around half of the students in the classes are Japanese, whereas the other half is from America, Europe and other Asian countries. After the introduction and comparison of the Japanese and Western theories, students have to discuss the truth-value of the theories, the applicability of those theories to Japan, and whether Japan is really unique. The discussions with students from other countries help them to understand their own and the others’ culture better.

Teaching Religion in Modern Japanese History
Dr. Clinton Godart, Hokkaido University, Modern Japanese Studies Program

In this talk I will reflect on the practical experience of teaching Japanese religions in modern Japanese history to classes composed of a mix of Japanese and international students. The topic of religion in history poses different challenges to the history teacher, but also opportunities. Students from different regions have differing assumptions about religion, secularization, and language. There is the great plurality of religious life in Japan: next to the main traditions of Buddhism, Shintō, and Confucianism there is Christianity and a large number of new religions. In the field of religious studies as well in Japanese society it is contested about what constitutes “religion/ shūkyō,” and the term has undergone radical historical change. These are some of the challenges involved. How to achieve “religious literacy,” insight into Japanese history, while also allowing for theoretical reflection on the complexity of religious life in Japan? What kind of learning outcomes are feasible? I will also share some experiences involving active learning, student projects, and excursions outside the classroom.

INDIVIDUAL PAPERS SESSION 9 (11:15-12:45 RY403)
Classification and Hierarchy between Male and Female Beautification
Chihiro Wada, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Department of Transdisciplinary Science and Engineering

The objective of this presentation is to explore how men’s participation in beautification does not necessarily prompt gender equality. I conducted several interviews with workers in the male beauty industry, including an institution, cosmetic companies, a men’s esthetic salon, and an eyelash salon. Through my interview results, dual explanation of male and female beautification is extracted. Some of my informants understand that female beautification intends to achieve ‘beautification’ itself, not practical benefits. In contrast, male beautification is often explained as an effective tool used to succeed in work and heterosexual love.

Some think that female beautification is superior to male beautification because it is of a more ‘pure’ and ‘ultimate’ style, as its aim is to enjoy the beautification process or the concept of beauty.
Given these arguments, female beautification is not allowed to gain something other than beautification, while male beautification is positively connected to social authority. In their understanding, female beautification is simultaneously both a means and a goal and does not lead to other open consequences. Alternatively, male beautification is evaluated as not ‘yet’ pure enough, but rather leads to success in work and heterosexual love. On the narrative level, men’s participation in beautification does not show gender equal intention, but rather creates gender dualism by narrating male beautification as more practical than female beautification, which creates male privilege to society.

Transnational Takarazuka and American Female Fans -Shaping American Female Fans’ Sexual and Gender Identities through Japanese Musical Theatre
Toshiko Irie, Doshisha University, Graduate School of Global Studies

The Takarazuka Revue (called Takarazuka) is a Japanese theatrical company composed entirely of unmarried females who perform both male and female roles. Previous scholarship on Takarazuka focuses on how Japanese female fans use it to examine their gender and sexual identities in contemporary Japan, but because they focus on Japanese fans, they overlook the transnational spread of Takarazuka and the voices of non-Japanese fans. This project is one of the first attempts to investigate why American female fans are so committed to Takarazuka, how they use it to fashion their identities, and how they recreate it with their own styles. The transnational perspective on Takarazuka reveals the complex processes by which other nations and peoples reconstruct meanings of Japanese Takarazuka based on their own needs. Especially, I am interested in how Takarazuka intersects with sexuality and gender through the lenses of American female fans. For this presentation, therefore, I will use interviews to examine how these female fans interpret one of Takarazuka’s most striking features: its all female cast. I will see why American female fans find this “all-female” Takarazuka cast so intriguing, and investigate how they understand it and recreate Takarazuka fandom by considering their socio-cultural background in the U.S. I believe my project will help move forward an emerging field of transnational fan studies, showing the ways transnational fandom creates new meanings for Japanese popular culture like Takarazuka.

Why is J-Pop less globalized than K-Pop? Comparing the Japanese and Korean Industries from a Musical Perspective
Daniel Hsu, Waseda University, Graduate School of International Culture and Communication Studies

This paper examines the differences between J-Pop (Japanese Popular Music) and K-Pop (Korean Popular Music) industries from a Musical Perspective. Since the year 2000, K-Pop already has a large influence over many places including Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, and some other Western countries; whereas J-Pop exists in the pop-music market longer, but with less popularity than K-Pop around the world. The growth of K-Pop along with Korean Wave depicts an unprecedented frame of Korean popular culture through the Korean media. Now, the Korean wave had become a regional cultural trend signifying a triumph of the Korean culture. The first section of this paper will organize the comparisons between K-Pop and J-Pop from the culture and financial point of view mainly based on the secondary academic sources. Then, the second section will be comparing K-Pop and J-Pop from the music point of view. This section will mainly cover the analyzations of the progression of the songs and the choreographies. As a part of the analyzation, the section will also cover the use of languages and words in the lyrics of K-Pop and J-Pop songs. By undertaking the comparisons between K-Pop and J-Pop from different point of views, I expect to answer the question of why Japan has never thought of globalizing their pop-music industry, despite being a neighbor country and liking K-Pop themselves, based on a rapid growth of K-Pop fans in Japan.

UNDERGRADUATE SESSION 1 (11:15-12:45 RY404)
Israeli Diaspora -A Case of Israelis Living in Japan
Mana Sakai, Hokkaido University, Faculty of Letters, Department of History and Anthropology

This research focuses on Israeli emigrants living in Japan, in the framework of diaspora studies. Israelis form a unique case in the field of diaspora studies. The state of Israel was established in 1948, as a response to the longing for creating a Jewish national home so that all the Jews in diaspora would be able to have safety and welfare without oppression and wandering which they had faced throughout history. For some reasons, however, there is a growing number of Israeli population that chooses to leave the country and to live abroad in spite of the condemnation of those who see emigration as a threat to the existence of Israel itself.

Based on a fieldwork in Japan, it looks at the patterns of emigrants’ motivation, social life, religious attitudes, difficulties and dilemma living in a foreign country, the level of loyalty to their homeland, and their plans to return. Previous studies have put great focus on Israelis living in western countries, such as the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, etc. However, it is safe to say that there has been no research founded regarding Israelis living in Asia, especially East Asia. Considering historical, religious, cultural, and geographical differences between Israel and Japan, this research displays their experiences in diaspora, and examines how those experiences have shaped the identity of Israeli expats, who mostly have a partner or a family with the locals. The end result is a major contribution to a wider understanding of Israeli diaspora.

Building Friendship, One Country at a Time [Presentation in Japanese/日本語]
Tsubasa Ohori, Ayane Murakami, Rika Kawamura, Nanzan University, Faculty of Policy Studies

Friendship is a universal experience, but what does friendship mean to peoples of different cultures, and how are friendships around the world and across cultures built? Friendship is a very important issue for Japanese people, as research shows that more people seem to suffer from it than enjoy it. Do young peoples of other cultures define and build friendships in more satisfying ways? Could young Japanese people learn different ways of approaching friendship, which could also help them more easily develop friendships across cultures?

In order to explore these questions, we asked university students from Asia, America and Europe, and Japan about their friendships, through interviews and online surveys. The results show that the idea of friendship does vary from culture to culture, particularly in how to engage with best friends and how to resolve problems between friends. Such differences seem to cause friction between friends of different cultures. However, more than cultural differences there are individual differences in the ideal number of best friends and the definition and expectations of friendship. Since it is expected that the number of foreigners entering Japan will increase in the future, it is necessary for people to understand other people’s ideas, to truly make friendship a universal experience.

Nationalism and Literature: A Comparative Perspective of Modern Hebrew and Japanese Literatures
Shirah Malka Cohen, Doshisha University, The Institute for the Liberal Arts

The focus of this research is on the relationship between nationalism and literature, and how the two interact in the form of “national literature”. The objective is to understand the historical impact that the concept of nationalism, which is a modern concept that became prominent during the 19th century, had on literature, and how it affected the way literature is read, composed, and understood. This is done in a comparative perspective by examining the development of modern Hebrew and modern Japanese literatures during the late 19th to the early 20th century. For both the Jews and Japan, this period was one of intense nation building, which was accompanied by attempts to define national identity and to create a unique national character, and as such both are prime case studies for researching the influence of nationalism on literature. This influence of nationalism on these two literary canons will be explored through a historical survey of their development, and by analyzing the works of prominent modern authors, including Hayyim Nahman Bialik for Hebrew literature, and Natsume Sōseki and Mori Ōgai for Japanese literature, to see how their works were influenced by the newly forming concept of the “Jewish nation” and the “Japanese nation” respectively. Lastly, a comparison between the two literatures will be undertaken in order to further explore the themes of this research.

English Language Education in Japanese Junior and Senior High Schools: Targets and Realities
Sakina Mithi, Doshisha University, The Institute for the Liberal Arts

My graduate thesis focuses primarily on the role of education in Japan, taking a further look at English language education in Japanese junior and senior high schools. It examines the guidelines by The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) and English as a Second Language (ESL). Their guidelines will be applied as theories to explain the disparity between what the English education should be like and the reality persisting in schools. Although MEXT has specified a target of getting 50% of student’s English level equivalent to the Eiken Level 3 exam prior to graduation, only 36.1% have reached this standard last year. The paper will argue and question the impact of potential problems such as the curriculum, the textbooks used and the employment of teachers. The second part of my paper will analyze MEXT’s educational reform on globalization which refers to making English a compulsory subject from fifth grade. Despite the English targets not being met, the government is still trying its best to generate global citizens who can become fluent in English. Therefore, I would like to investigate to what extent the problems have influenced the implementation and its effectiveness. Since English is highly regarded as a subject rather than as a communication tool, how Eikaiwa (English language school) industries operate to fill in the gap that is not provided by the government will also be discussed.

LGBT Youth: Making Japanese Schools More Inclusive
Kirin Endo, Yuka Okada, Arisa Yonemoto, Haruka Kato, Nanzan University, Faculty of Policy Studies

Compared with many European countries and the United States, Japanese youth seem to have much less awareness of LGBT issues. Providing appropriate support for LGBT youth is a challenge for educational institutions in Japan; an even larger challenge is to educate all young people to respect and support LGBT youth. For many LGBT students, the Japanese school environment is still difficult, and many do not feel that their identity is understood let alone respected. This present study compares the awareness of young people about LGBT issues in Japan and Europe, North and South America, and Asia, and also investigates the schooling and government systems for supporting LGBT youth. Foreign university students from Europe, the Americas and Asia studying at Nanzan University were interviewed, as were Japanese students. Based upon the analysis of these interviews, a questionnaire was created and administered to a broader number of students. The results illustrate the lack of educational experiences in Japan about LGBT compared to other countries, and a similar lack of awareness about LGBT issues.

One place to start to address this issue in Japan is in the school, and the presentation concludes with policy recommendations for making Japanese schools more inclusive and conscious of their responsibilities to educate youth about LGBT issues.

ORGANIZED PANEL 4 Challenges of traditional arts transmission for non-Japanese (14:00-15:30 RY401)
Two-way traffic in Traditional arts transmission to non-Japanese students: Creative compromise leading to pedagogical innovations?
Dr. Jonah Salz, Ryukoku University, International Studies, Department of Intercultural Communication

Western artists and scholars since the turn of the 20th century have been fascinated by the lyric, masked noh theatre; the superhuman kabuki theatre, and the vibrantly delicate nihonbuyo dancers. Regular, intensive courses for non-Japanese students and artists have been held regularly in Japan, the U.S., and Europe for the past half-century. This paper explores four of the largest, continuing programs—Theatre of Yugen in San Francisco, Traditional Theatre Training in Kyoto, International Theatre Institute in Tokyo, and Theatre Nohgaku (TN in Tokyo, Reading PA, and Royal Holloway, London, UK. (Since another significant player, the INI, is covered below, I will omit it in my talk). Specifically it looks at the compromises in traditional training that are necessitated due to economic exigencies, but also the aesthetic and performative choices teachers make to provide what they feel is the “essence” of the art. This may entail creative compromises in the language employed, the time and intensity of the lessons, the costumes employed, and the recital program itself. Perhaps unsurprisingly but little remarked upon in the literature, is in addition to the wealth of new knowledge acquired by dedicated students, the experience of teaching foreign students, and playing before non-Japanese audiences at home or abroad, has far-reaching effects on the Japanese masters’ subsequent teaching and performance. The one-way transmission hierarchy of master to disciple of the traditional iemoto system is disrupted by the two-way learning process of creative compromises and innovative pedagogies. These disruptions may create new teaching methods that become part of the master’s personal tradition, or even a new family tradition.

‘Losing yourself along the way: the ethics of noh training in the intercultural context’
Dr. Diego Pellecchia, Kyoto Sangyo University, Faculty of Cultural Studies, Department of Kyoto Studies

Traditional noh theatre is a ‘geidō or ‘art of the way’. Its learning system is generally based on a one-to-one relationship between teacher and student, in which the former provides a model, and the latter imitates it as closely as possible. During the long apprentice phase of a professional, which may last from age three until the late twenties, the student is not encouraged to develop an individual style, rather, an emphasis is put on the importance of the ‘way’ – pre-established aesthetic and ethical conventions inscribed in tradition. What is the impact of such an educational approach on the creativity of the artist?

To what extent does traditional training require apprentices to do away with their individuality in order to embrace the body of knowledge that is passing on to them? These questions gain further significance when considering non-Japanese practitioners belonging to educational backgrounds in which the notion of ‘self’ and of ‘individual genius’ has been given increasing importance. As such practitioners usually approach noh training as adults, how do they relate to a practice requiring them to do away with their ‘self’? What are the ethical implications of such condition? This paper will attempt at answering these questions drawing from the author’s direct experience studying and teaching noh with the International Noh Institute.

The Mysteries of Tradition: Initiation, Mastery, Cynicism, and Escape
Dr. Phillip Flavin, Kansai University of Foreign Languages

In this paper, the author’s reflects upon his own three decade experiences in sokyoku-jiuta~ music for koto and shamisen–and the process he passed through before discovering and establishing his own position within the world of ryuha, or ‘school’, as a non-Japanese. Despite it now being the second decade of the 21st century, when multi-national professional musicians share the global stage, the non-Japanese practitioner of the Japanese performing arts remains an anomaly. Very few of those who display a serious interest continue on to become professional performers. This paper addresses the question as to why this should be. In doing so, the structure of ryuha is explored, as is the positioning of the non-Japanese within this social system in their search for knowledge, mastery, recognition, and advancement.

INDIVIDUAL PAPERS SESSION 10 (14:00-15:30 RY402)
Clothing the Body Politic: Menswear and Japanese Diplomacy, 1853-1871
Dr. Gavin James Campbell, Doshisha University, Graduate School of Global Studies

As their diplomatic contacts expanded following Perry’s 1853-54 mission, Japanese officials began considering how to dress for a new international audience. While a number of scholars have argued that Japan’s drift from traditional court wear in the 1850s to western-style frock coats in the 1870s represents an almost inevitable process of “westernization,” this paper examines that two-decade interval as a period of contest and uncertainty. In fact, over those two decades Japanese men played with different elements of style — a hat, leather shoes, a pocket watch, a shirt, a walking cane — making daily sartorial adjustments on a shifting spectrum that defied binary divisions between “western wear” and “Japanese wear.”

Even in government service, where the state proscribed an official wardrobe, Japanese officials conducted international diplomacy in evolving styles of dress. The modifications, experiments and reforms were more than just fashionable experimentation. Clothing became an exploration of critical questions about national identity and the nation’s place in an emerging global imperial order. Japanese officials learned that western nations did not all dress alike, and that rather than a discrete, unified set of goods, practices and meanings, Western menswear was itself a complex, diverse and constantly changing set of symbols. Consequently, Japanese diplomats borrowed freely from a variety of sartorial traditions, which they harnessed to Japan’s own nation-building project. In short, Japanese diplomats who donned trousers and coats in the 1870s were not capitulating to “westernization,” but were instead exploring new identities on a global stage.

Of Bicycles and Barbarians: Learning to be a “scofflaw” on the Streets and Sidewalks of Tokyo
Dr. John Mock, Temple University Japan Campus

While Tokyo has modernized massively over the past 50 years, the bicycle remains a major mode of transportation, not only in the residential neighborhoods but also in the “downtown” areas. In Tokyo, there are something like 100,000 bicycles. Many people using bicycles are mothers with children aboard and the elderly, both of which are not very agile. Yet, the city has almost completely failed to make adjustments for the competing demands of motor vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians resulting in a substantial number of deaths and injuries every year. Not only is the urban sprawl not engineered for safety, the education needed to operate bicycles safely is not sufficiently provided and, perhaps more importantly, not reinforced allowing highly visible flagrant violations of the law which reinforces the poor education. This paper looks at bicycle behavior on the streets of Tokyo. While beginning with the attempts to train children in correct bicycle behavior, the focus of the paper is on the less formal “reinforcement” of highly visible flagrant (and dangerous) violations and the inability, or unwillingness, for authorities such as the police to positively reinforce the proper training. Essentially, the contrast is drawn between formal education (“proper” bicycle behavior) and informal education (what is perceived on the streets of Tokyo as role models and the behavior of authority figures such as police)

Nuclear Embodiment: Learning to Love Radiation after Fukushima
Maxime Polleri, York University, Department of Social Anthropology

In his essay entitled “Anthropological Shock,” sociologist Ulrick Beck described the nuclear hazard as invisible, odorless, senseless. In brief, as a sensory deprived threat that demonstrates the inadequacy of our physical experience of it. Focusing on the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, this paper rather argues that nuclear materials are made even more perceptible than before. Through a case study of three government-related centers that aim to officially explain the phenomenon of radiation in the aftermath of Fukushima, this paper explore how members of the Japanese public are acquiring an affective knowledge for radioactive matter through particular sensory interaction. Recent trends in STS and anthropological studies have demonstrated that corporal knowledge and affective entanglements play a key role in how individuals rationalize hardly perceptible matters. In similar ways, I demonstrate that the embodied experience promoted by these centers successfully shift the public attitude of radiation from what used to be a synonym of manmade danger toward an hegemonic vision of natural wonder, technological amusement, and scientific amazement. What I explore is a saturation of the sensory experience that ironically eliminates the disturbing aspect of radioactive danger and that contrast Joseph Masco’s technoaesthetics, where diminishing sensory experiences depoliticized and normalized nuclear materials. The normalization of radioactive contamination is not made through a politics of invisibility (Kuchinskaya 2014) that simply erase radioactive threat, but rather through a process that I call “nuclear embodiment,” in which radiation is made visible, palpable, enjoyable, and affective.

ORGANIZED PANEL 5 Autoethnography and Anthropology of/in Education (14:00-15:45 RY403)
A Bilingual Autoethnographic Memoir of My Educational Experiences in Japan and the U.S.: Reflections on How I Became Who I Am
Dr. Sachiko Horiguchi, Temple University Japan Campus

Anthropologists have long demonstrated a variety of ways in which socialization and education shape the life paths of individuals and their sense of self. This paper draws on an autoethnographic photo essay blog I wrote on a daily basis during my three-month self-searching sojourn “back” in Los Angeles, U.S. last year, and attempts to explore the relationship between my personal educational experiences and my scholarly perspectives on Japanese education as well as my professional career as an anthropologist. The trip last year was my first trip in roughly 30 years, back to where I spent 3 ½ years of my childhood with my family as a child of a Japanese expat father. In this blog journal, I go back and forth between past and present, between Japanese and English languages, and attempt to reflect anthropologically and historically on my childhood memories to make sense of how I became who I am. In this paper, I focus on the blog posts where I reminisce about and compare my educational experiences in Los Angeles (in local American schools and Japanese supplementary school) and Tokyo (in private Japanese school), and examine how the personal, affective, and the professional dimensions of selfhood are entangled in retrospectively analyzing education in comparative and anthropological perspective. Through this examination, this paper will shed light on ways in which reflexive autoethnography can contribute to the anthropology of education, as well as the role that language, or more specifically, translanguaging, may play in (auto)ethnographic writings.

An Autoethnographic Exploration of Ibasho Project with Chinese Immigrant Youth in the United States
Dr. Tomoko Tokunaga, Keio University, International Center

This presentation is an autoethnographic exploration of Ibasho project which I co-designed and conducted to 18 first generation Chinese immigrant high school students who participated in a youth program of a community based organization (CBO) located in Chinatown on the East Coast of the United States. Ibasho is a Japanese indigenous concept which means places, spaces, and communities where one feels a sense of safety, acceptance, and comfort. The project which consisted of art workshops and interviews was an educational intervention aiming to assist immigrant youth in raising their awareness of their social worlds, developing identities, and supporting their integration into a new society. More specifically, the project attempted to support these youth as they transformed alienating and unfamiliar places for them into ibasho. In this presentation, I examine my positionality as a hybrid scholar/educator and explore why and how I came to this project. I also reflect on the process of conducting this project, specifically focusing on the ways in which the students and I deepened, challenged, and co-constructed our own hybridized concept of ibasho. Finally, I hope to reflect on my shifting position as an ethnographer who began to incorporate transformative approach in my research.

Translanguaging at a College in Kyoto: Power, Authority, and the Legitimization of Linguistic Repertoires
Salem Young, Anh Đỗ Ngọc, Shinnosuke Taguchi, Gregory Poole, Doshisha University, The Institute for the Liberal Arts

This study investigates the everyday practice of translanguaging at the Institute for the Liberal Arts (ILA), Doshisha University, our home institution, an English-taught undergraduate degree program (ETP) with a diverse student body constituent of more than 200 students and 35 nationalities. The findings from our study are thus grounded in a diverse collective of students whose identities and languages are shaped by the reality of international migration. In this environment, we, the students and professors, selectively apply our linguistic repertoires in a variety of settings and combinations. The presence and absence of visible translanguaging communicative practices within the ILA were examined to reconceptualize multilingualism as not merely the pluralization of monolingualism (Pennycook 2010), but rather a demonstration of how a speaker’s full linguistic repertoire is deployed without necessarily focusing on politicized boundaries of “named” languages (Otheguy, García, Reed 2015). As “indigenous” (auto-)ethnographers, we exploited our insider status reflexively to investigate the contexts in which, and purposes for which, these linguistic processes, strategies, and choices occur in the various spaces and zones of communicative events. Through analyzing the contextual frameworks in which linguistic repertoires are fully engaged, or not, the interplay of power dynamics in active pursuit or disregard of translanguaging points to an embedded framework of institutional hierarchy within which monolingual paradigms produce “social and educational inequality” (Garcia & Kleyn 2016).

Autoethnography of/in Teaching Anthropology
Dr. Ichiro Numazaki, Tohoku University, Graduate School of Arts and Letters

This paper critically reflects upon my experience of teaching anthropology at a Japanese university for a quarter century and examines how my cross-cultural upbringing and professional culture-crossing impacted on my way of teaching anthropology to mostly mono-culturally raised “Japanese” students. The paper also examines the potential of auto-ethnography as a method of learning anthropology and of developing anthropologically sensitive attitude. In this paper, I would like to propose that “pedagogical essentialism” of culture is useful and necessary as an introductory means of understanding and appreciating differences across groups of people, especially in the age of resurgent ethno-nationalisms and ever increasing globalization and transnationalization. Finally, I would also like to argue that autoethnography of individuals who grew up both in and outside Japan may be used as an interesting material for teaching culture-consciousness to mono-culturally raised “Japanese” students.

UNDERGRADUATE SESSION 2 (14:00-15:45 RY404)
Kurdish Migrants in Japan -Sense of Belonging and Perception of Home
Yuzuka Ando, Soka University, Faculty of International Liberal Arts

This research examines the sense of belongingness of Kurdish migrants who migrated from the southern part of Turkey to Japan. The study aims to figure out where the migrants consider their “home” to be, and further looks into the relationship between the sense of belongingness and the integration level of a person. The research is built upon unstructured interviews, of those who migrated in their childhood and in their adult years, respectively. The research revealed a generation gap in self-perception. It was found out that there was a stronger identity as Kurds for older people, but less for younger ones. The result also indicated that migrants could shift their priority of what functions they expect for their home depending on the situation. Those who have family to protect tend to attach more weight to safety than to the sense of rootedness in the cultural aspect. Furthermore, the research found out that choices of migrants regarding the place of settlement are not necessarily connected to the level of integration into the community.

The History and Historiography of Sumō, Kendō, Judō and Karate in the Context of Japanese Identity
Dany Hibri Tsuruta, Doshisha University, The Institute for the Liberal Arts

This paper takes a closer look at the following Japanese national sports: sumō, kendō, judō and karate. By studying their history and historiography, we are examining what makes them “national sports”, “traditional” and symbols of Japanese “nativeness”.

This paper is based on the works of Hobsbawm’s The Invention of Tradition (1992) and Vlastos’ Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan (1998). In their works, they argue that there are ‘real’ traditions that have existed before modernity; however, there are some traditions that were invented during the postmodern era that claim to be ancient for the purpose of legitimacy. By legitimizing itself through the invention of tradition, the nation state can create common practices and a common identity. With the usage of modernist nationalism theories, this paper is attempting to argue that just like nationalism and the concept of the nation, the traditional aspect of the aforementioned “national sports” is modern. In addition to historical analysis, this paper will also be taking an anthropological approach by evaluating the interrelation between identity and tradition. After taking a closer look at history, historiography, nationalism and identity as a means of explaining the modernity, invention and culture of sumō, judo and kendō, we will look at how these sports affected the image of Japan to its people and to foreigners. We thusly ask ourselves, how does the history and historiography of “national sports” shape Japanese identity to an extent that we question what is truly native?

Halal Food in Japan: Meeting the Needs of Foreign Students and Residents [Presentation in Japanese/日本語]
Sayaka Koide, Satsuki Shibusawa, Yui Nakane, Kanako Yamada, Nanzan University, Faculty of Policy Studies

Halal refers to what is permissible in traditional Islamic law, and is frequently applied to food and drink. In the Quran, the word Halal is contrasted with Haram or that which is forbidden, such as consuming pork and alcohol.

In recent years, the number of Japanese travel companies, hotels and restaurants which cater to tourists with Halal preferences is increasing. Moreover, the number of people living in Japan with Halal preferences, both Muslim and non-Muslim, is rising, so restaurants and hotels, supermarkets and online shopping sites in Japan are also beginning to cater to these preferences. However, particularly in cities outside Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto, access to Halal food can be limited, and finding Halal food can be challenging.

This study seeks to explore the experiences of people with Halal preferences who are living in the Nagoya area. A mixed methods exploratory approach was adopted. First, we interviewed local Halal supermarket and restaurant operators, and then foreign students and young people who prefer to consume Halal products. On the basis of these interviews, we constructed a questionnaire, which was distributed through snowball sampling to other residents of central Japan. Analysis of the results showed that access to Halal products for preparing food at home is increasing significantly, aided by online shopping sites; the provision of Halal products at regular supermarkets is lagging. Moreover, there are still relatively few places to eat out outside the home, even on campus. (238 words)

Heroism and Nationalism in Modern Japan
Jiwon Choi, Doshisha University, The Institute for the Liberal Arts

This research aims to articulate the essence of heroism in Japan; how the narratives of the heroes are entangled with the development of nationalism in Japan. Historical framework of the development of nationalism in Japan shows how it has undergone various social changes which had caused Japan to strive to build its own national identity, avoiding the encroachment of the West. In order to promote national unity, Japan needed a spiritual foundation to support the idea of ‘Japaneseness’. Alongside this nation-building process of Japan, heroism was developed as a mean to resonate the public with the nationalistic ideas of the heroes. ‘Great men’ from the history were selected and reshaped as a hero with myths and legends surrounding them. And the images assigned to the heroes were flexible and often shifted depending on the social changes in Japan. While acknowledging this unnaturalness of such heroes, this research explores the process of making heroes and their roles in consolidating national identity, by examining the transformation of the imperial ideology and the image of the emperor, and the meaning of the spirit ‘wa’ and the image of Prince Shōtoku. In addition, this research conducts a study of the iconography of Japanese national heroes by examining the depicted images of Saigō Takamori and Sakamoto Ryōma in Japanese popular culture.

Enduring Academic Indecisiveness: Factors Influencing Enrollment Rate of Brazilian Nikkeijin in Japanese Universities
Guilherme Nakamura, Doshisha University, The Institute for the Liberal Arts

Prior to the financial recession of 2007-2008 that hit the United States, the Brazilian community held the status of the third largest group of foreign residents in Japan. Up to this point, such huge number of nikkeijin migrants was due to the necessity of Japanese industries to fill in the labor shortage gaps encountered during the bubble economy. Hence, the overwhelming majority of Brazilians migrating to Japan for the sole purpose of working resulted in several works published during the 1990s and early 2000s reporting substantially little future perspectives for education among the nikkeijin. This paper analyzes the decision-making of young Brazilian nikkeijin in recent time regarding their plans after high school graduation in Japan considering a possible shift in their work-centered mentality in response to potential improvements in governmental policies towards minority groups, effects of globalization, and economic and political developments in both countries. The methodology of this study is based on literature on migration, culture assimilation, educational paradoxes for minorities, and labor conditions in Japan published from the 1990s and early 2000s, together with latest reports of the MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) and Ministry of Justice, newspaper articles, chronicles published on websites of nikkeijin communities, and both qualitative and quantitative research in two Brazilian high schools in the Shiga and Shizuoka prefectures. The ultimate purpose of this investigation is to discover what are the current explanations for the nikkeijin’s decision-making, and conclude whether those are still applicable to current times or not.

Japan’s Kawaii Culture: Unique yet Universal [Presentation in Japanese/日本語]
Momoe Maruyama, Ayumi Sendo, Ayano Abe, Kana Kodama, Nanzan University, Faculty of Policy Studies

The rise of Lolita fashion and Harajuku as a site for expressing and performing youth identity from 2009 represented the beginning of the ‘world kawaii revolution’. The Japanese Foreign Ministry was quick to recognize this phenomenon, and appointed ‘kawaii ambassadors’ to encourage the growing interest in Japanese pop culture. Kawaii culture is a uniquely Japanese form of culture, but what exactly does kawaii mean? To explore this question, Japanese students and foreign exchange students studying at Nanzan University, along with young people in their 20s living outside Japan who have not yet been to Japan, were interviewed and then answered a questionnaire.

Results indicate that Japanese students and foreign students and youth have very different ideas of what kawaii is – there is not a common definition or set of expectations. As part of the Cool Japan campaign, how kawaii products and services are developed and marketed should reflect each culture’s way of defining kawaii. Recognizing this cultural diversity should increase the popularity and universality of kawaii products and services, and also contribute to our understanding of what culture is and how it is shared.

INDIVIDUAL PAPERS SESSION 11 (16:00-17:30 RY401)

What do we want to know? Questioning the methodological and theoretical underpinnings of current research on moral education in Japan
Sam Bamkin, De Montfort University, School of Applied Social Science

This presentation offers an evaluative perspective on methodologies employed by previous studies to address important anthropological, educational and political questions on the subject of moral education (dōtoku) in Japan.

Moral education should be interesting to anthropologists and educationalists, in not only socialising individuals but holding the express aim of contributing to the formation of individuals’ values and ways of living. However, the academic debate has been informed largely by policy and document analysis. This seems appropriate to understand the intentions of ‘central’ power-holders and relevant to social anthropology. However, this is only one side of the relationship between education and the state.

Amidst a period of reform in moral education, this presentation considers how scholarly understanding can be expanded by examining more ‘local’ approaches, utilising methodologies that consider classroom practice, the social agency of teachers as enacted with reference to policy and what children learn. It seeks to address a possible methodological and theoretical imbalance resulting from the higher visibility of ‘central’ state actions over the local practice of educators, with a hope of producing knowledge more relevant to research questions in educational anthropology and education studies.

Ba (場) as a heuristic for teaching, learning, and co-producing a multicultural classroom
Yuka Hasegawa. Research Corporation of the University of Hawai’i

This paper explores the Japanese concept ba (場) as a heuristic that can help students learn about themselves and others in a multicultural classroom. Ba is a polysemous concept, much like the term “culture” but unlike culture that refers to the holistic representation of life worlds in a global world of systems, ba refers to the caesura that opens up in a globalizing world where different systems at multiple levels compete for authority and leadership. There are two major approaches to ba: philosophers and social scientists approach ba as a ground from which figures emerge while the linguists have introduced ba within the field of emancipatory pragmatics that apply non-western concepts as metalinguistic instruments of analysis. Based on my experience of teaching Japanese Culture to Japanese, Asian-American and Hispanic-American students at Hawaii Tokai International College, I discuss how I taught the concept ba by using Mary Brinton’s book Lost In Transition (2010), used it as a heuristic to help students learn about themselves and others in a multicultural classroom, and helped them practice what they learned by finding their positionalities to co-produce our classroom ba.

Teaching Manga Literacy: Race Representation in Shōnen Manga
Omar Baker, Doshisha University, The Institute for the Liberal Arts

The international success of Japanese anime, video games, and to a lesser extent manga has helped to sustain interest in both Japan studies programs overseas and study abroad programs in Japan. Manga, however, is often the medium from which successful anime and video games are adapted, while those not adapted from an original manga source are often themselves adapted into manga. Computer technology has facilitated both authorized and unauthorized translation and distribution of manga and anime, with the ubiquity of personal computers, smartphones, and Internet access in many parts of the world leading to an increasingly large and diverse audience for these works. As Japanese manga and anime become global, and thus used in a wider variety of contexts by people of increasingly varied nationalities, ethnicities, and life experiences, a wealth of different readings and meanings becomes available. As universities in Japan and abroad incorporate the nascent fields of manga and anime studies into their curricula, it is important to provide along with basic literacy in these media opportunities for students to consider possible cultural differences in the ways manga and anime are read and meanings are construed. Japanese society is frequently described as ethnically or racially homogenous, leading to a belief among certain manga and anime scholars that Japanese creators in these media are inherently unaware of, uninterested in, or insensitive to the race issues that plague minorities worldwide. A culturally relativist perspective prevails, from which a non-prioritization of realist race representation and a non-historical approach to storytelling is not only defended, but posited as a potential tool with which to combat racist stereotyping and categorization. I explore these ideas by examining the representation of race in a selection of Japan’s best selling manga-based entertainment franchises.

INDIVIDUAL PAPERS SESSION 12 (16:00-17:30 RY402)
Discourses of Cultural Innovation and Creativity Among Cultural/Creative Professionals in Tokyo: A Case Study Approach
Dr. Grace Gonzalez, Hosei University, Faculty of Global and Interdisciplinary Studies/Ichigaya Liberal Arts Institute

Cultural and creative industries (CCI, henceforth) are increasingly being employed the world over as an all-around engine for socio-cultural innovation and socio-economic revitalization. Coupled with cultural-urban (re)branding and mega-event (e.g., The Olympic and Paralympic Games) strategies, economic and cultural policies fostering the cultural/creative ‘capital’ of a nation/city represent the zeitgeist of current public policy agendas. In this vein, ‘global’ cities like Tokyo strive to become unrivalled magnets and milieux for culture and creativity. However, the inner workings of the making and remaking of cultural/creative ecosystems by CCI professionals are seldom addressed within national and/or local mainstream policy circles. The purpose of the paper is to examine discursive practices of culture innovation and creativity among CCI professionals in Tokyo. In doing so, it casts light onto the dynamics, ‘cognitive paths’, and emergent processes ingrained in the CCI ecosystems (i.e., derived from day-to-day socialization). Against this background, the paper seeks to deepen and further develop analyses related to the interpretation of cultural innovation, creativity, and cultural/creative work practices (by CCI professionals) vis-à-vis policy-making in Japan/Tokyo. The paper findings draw on qualitative empirical data (comprised mainly of semi-structured in-depth interviews) collected between October 2013 and April 2016 in Tokyo. Informants include CCI professionals in commercial and non-profit organizations, academia, and government who lead or are directly involved in the planning, enactment, and management of CCI initiatives and programs in Tokyo.

Fishing for Culture? Re-Educating Fishers as Self-Marketing Entrepreneurs
Dr. Sonja Ganseforth, German Institute for Japanese Studies, Tokyo

This contribution is based on work in progress on small family businesses in coastal fishing communities in Kyūshū and explores the implications of programs for revitalization and income augmentation in coastal fisheries.

Shrinking maritime resources, the rising cost of fuel and stagnating fish prices contribute to the declining profitability of this economic sector. Structural transformations on world and national markets are increasingly challenging the livelihoods of coastal fishers and changing the power structures of the seafood business in Japan: the emergence of giant global players in buyer-driven global commodity chains of fishery produce, the proliferation of Japanese supermarket chains, and shifting consumer preferences towards processed seafood products, take-out and eating out. Plummeting total numbers and the growing ratio of fishers above the age of 65 in Japanese fisheries mirror the demographic problems of rural communities in general.

Against this background of social, economic and spatial precarity, policy makers as well as civil society organisations develop a range of revitalization and reform strategies, often centring on ideas like the establishment of alternative marketing channels, the creation of new value-added products and higher standards of quality and traceability, and the invention and marketing of local traditions. This contribution argues that these programs entail a qualitative shift towards the marketing of fish(eries) as cultural commodities and implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) make problematic demands of a re-education of fishers, turning producers of food into self-marketing entrepreneurs.

Students Abroad Versus Study Abroad: Intention and Practice
Roy Gerard Hedrick III, Doshisha University, Graduate School of Global Studies

Much of the traditional work on study abroad focuses on the academic and personal value of study abroad and whether study abroad truly fosters personal growth, internationalization of the student, and better career prospects. While these stated goals are certainly laudable, most research quantifies these objectives in ways which may not represent the actual experience for students. I will examine the ideology of study abroad differently by exploring the disconnect between what students say they want from study abroad and the promises made by the traditional rhetoric of study abroad.

Interviews I have conducted with students show that their motivations vary. One student found it easier to justify study abroad than a long vacation, while another wanted to come mainly to visit his husband. To further explore student motivations, I am conducting a qualitative study through interviewing 11 credit-seeking students currently studying at the Doshisha Center for Japanese Language and Culture as well as interviewing administrators who work in the Doshisha International Students Office and the University of New Orleans Division of International Education. Through these interviews I will gain further insight into the motivations of these students and administrators, and better understand the difference in perception of the role of study abroad between these two groups.